BUDGET SOFTWARE: SOME BARGAINS, SOME BUSTS Back in the heyday of Commodore, every software store had a bunch of hanging on the rack or piled in a display bin, priced at $5.98 to $12.98 (the typical "name brand" program sold for $29 and up. The package often seemed to promise way more than you'd think the price could deliver. With the idea that $15 or less is a reasonable gamble, I picked up several of these, back in the day, and wrote a mini-review of some of them in the early 1990s. Although the $50 program can now often be found for $5 to $10, the best of these programs are still worth something today...and you might get them for a dollar or two! CALENDARS & STATIONERY (Melody Hall). This company was part of the Kyocera Unison group which made PrintMaster, and this program for about $6 was a super bargain. It allows you to set up a weekly or monthly calendar for any month and year. The heading defaults to month and year (May 1988) but you can change it to anything you want (such as MAY MADNESS). You can position graphics only at the top (left, right or both), but there's a lot of space below the calendar so you could get creative by running the paper through again with another program such as PrintMaster or Print Shop. You can add notes to any date--up to three lines of about 7 characters each. There is also a feature to make letterhead stationery. At this price there is no printed documentation of the fonts and graphics, but all can be previewed on screen. You can save your layout to disk, and you can preview it on screen (it fills the upper right 2/3 of the screen). Many of the graphics are the same as those found on PrintMaster--in fact, if you have PrintMaster, don't buy this program--you already have it! But if you don't have PrintMaster, this is an inexpensive program for making good, quick calendars. Using the Bo Derek scale of 1 to 10, this gets an 8. AWARDWARE: Priced in the range of $12 to $15, this program from HiTech Expressions offers a lot for the money. It consists of templates for horizontal and vertical awards, certificates, licenses, etc. You can select large, medium and small fonts, graphics, and a signature area, with or without a "seal." The program does not let you position any of these elements but there are over 50 different templates for full-size paper with enough different combinations to fill most needs. There are also 6 templates for 5 x 7 documents, 5 8 x 10 letterhead/memo formats and about 20 templates for materials formatted like checks, tickets or coupons and other miscellaneous layouts. There are only 20 graphics, but another disk is available; and there are 20 borders and 5 fonts. This program shows only a 1/4 screen graphic representation of your document, and does not allow saving. However, the last document created remains on the disk until you start a new one so you can return to it to change or reuse it. An overall 8. CARDWARE: Also from HiTech, this one was a big disappointment, even at $9.98. It does allow you to create a greeting card on disk, so if that's of interest to you, it could be worthwhile. There are all of 6 graphics on the disk, and the format and set up are similar to the Print Shop. For me, this got a 4. EASY WORKING PLANNER: Although I developed a vigorous antipathy for the Spinnaker company because of problems I had with their other software and their total lack of response to my complaints, this $9.98 spreadsheet program has a lot of features and was an excellent buy. It came with 2 disks, one for IBM, and one with Commodore on one side and Apple on the other. I used the IBM version on a PC at work. It offers fairly standard spreadsheet features, but uses up the disk space rather quickly on the Commodore--I was able to create about 8 single-page statistical forms, which print out to 8 1/2 by 11 pages. On the IBM hard disk, this limitation disappeared. After using the Pocket Planner, I can only give Easy Planner a 5 as a Commodore spreadsheet program--but if you have access to an Apple or IBM compatible, this might be a super bargain for you (not today, since it probably will not run under Windows!). THE WRITE STUFF: What can I say? Over the years this has become the standard for Commodore, and hundreds if not thousands of users know how much it gives for only $12 (I've seen it offered for $20 in computer magazine ads). I've bought three word processors, not counting GeoWrite. The most expensive (WordPro 64) was the least satisfactory. Pocket Writer 2 is excellent ($35 by mail order, though the list price was something like $60). A number of Commodore users swear by this program, and it is outstanding. Still, I find that I use TWS, our little $12 wonder, for nearly all my writing. Dig through those software piles at yard sales and flea markets--you may find a super bargain like these. (Via the Commodore Information Center, http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html)